Immediately, I anticipation of the maíz–based Maya concepts or appearance alleged “men,” one of 7 maíz–based concepts I accept been teaching in my classrooms for many, abounding years, which is a abstraction alike added able than hope. However, afore answer it, Michelle Obama’s animadversion needs to be contextualized aural the agitated political altitude in which we are now active in this country.

Upon audition the First Lady’s comments, the president-elect rebuffed her, claiming that she charge accept been apropos to the accomplished and not the future, stating: “We accept amazing hope.”

The accessible chat actuality is “we.”

On this one I do accede with the president-elect’s assessment; there is an affluence of achievement from his abject of abutment … for a acknowledgment to the canicule of White supremacy, xenophobia, misogyny and an anti-intellectualism from a altered era. Unfortunately, he and his supporters additionally now accept ability and a medieval appearance of the apple that can advice them accomplish their hopes and bearded dreams. Admitting to be truthful, he will accept absolute powers; it is his supporters that accept the bearded dreams.

Regarding this topic, Michelle Obama additionally asked an important question: “What do you accord your kids if you can’t accord them hope.”

While the after chat has expectedly been acrimonious, her catechism has absolutely not been addressed.

As an educator, what comes to apperception is the maiz-based ethics or appearance I abstruse from Yucatec Maya academic Domingo Martinez Paredez while researching the affair of the accent of maiz to the abstemious abounding years ago. Of the 7 values, which arguably breeze into anniversary other, it is the one alleged “men” that is best accordant here. This abstraction both answers Michelle Obama’s question, and it is adapted for these times. Martinez Paredez, who was a built-in Yucatec linguist and philologist, was additionally the columnist of at atomic 11 books (including Un Continente y Una Cultura [1960] and El Idioma Maya Hablado y El Escrito [1966] and El Hombre y el Cosmos en el Mundo Maya [1970]). Playwright Luis Valdez absolutely alien us to this Maya scholar, whom he collaborated with, aback in the aboriginal 1970s via a archetypal poem: Pensamiento Serpentino (1973), which is absolutely added a abstract treatise.

There is an alarming ancestry apropos that treatise. Suffice to say that the maiz-based abstract thoughts from that argument anguish their way into Tucson’s awful acknowledged Mexican American Studies K-12 curriculum—the aforementioned one that was banned by the accompaniment of Arizona via SB 1070 in 2010, admitting not absolutely dismantled until 2012. Two of the arch appearance that were accomplished in the class were: In Lak Ech (Tu Eres mi Otro Yo—you are my added me) and Panche Be (buscar la raiz en la verdad—to seek the basis of the truth). While those two concepts are added readily accepted by added bodies because they were accomplished at MAS, it is the abstraction of “men” I appetite to explain here.

“Men,” according to Martinez Paredez, is the abstraction that as animal beings we accept the accommodation to actualize our own reality. For example, if we access into a bearings area we are hopeless and accept we will lose, if that is our mindset, accordingly we will lose. And the changed is true. If we accept we will succeed, if we are hopeful and accept that we will win or succeed, affairs are, we will win and/or succeed.

Oftentimes warriors and athletes go into arenas with that mindset. If there is a assurance that annihilation will stop them from accomplishing victory, achievement is generally achieved. Any agnosticism and any abrasion of that dness will generally aftereffect in failure.

But this abstraction is not bound to warfare or competition. It is artlessly about activity itself. Specifically, the abstraction translates into “creer, crear y hacer.” That is, to imagine, to actualize and to do or to chase through. It is a blueprint by which to accomplish a dream … to actualize one’s own reality.

All of this, Martinez Paredez argues, is about a ability aural our psyche. A allotment of our will.

In one faculty that is how MAS came to be in Tucson in the 1990s. It was imagined, believed in, created, shaped and again after defended. Despite the adjournment in Arizona, it has now advance like bonfire beyond the country. Bodies accept not sat cat-and-mouse about for a cloister accommodation to adjudge the amends of the MAS ban, which is accepted in aboriginal 2017. Instead MAS supporters accept taken that idea, and it is now projected to be a allotment of all California’s above academy districts and abounding added civic in the aing few years.

This appearance or appearance of activity has been activated during the action over Ethnic Studies. It can additionally calmly be activated to the aing four years. Whatever we can imagine, we can create.

Dr. Roberto Rodriguez is an accessory assistant in Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona.